


Lemongrass and Happiness

by susiephalange



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 1940s, Angst and Feels, Art School, Best Friends, Canon Compliant, F/M, Female Reader, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Hydra (Marvel), Inhumans (Marvel), Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, World War II, only hinted at tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 16:44:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14169180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiephalange/pseuds/susiephalange
Summary: Sometimes, the best love confessions take seventy-plus years to say.





	Lemongrass and Happiness

**Author's Note:**

> A request from my Wattpad.
> 
> I can't believe this is my first Pre-Serum Steve Rogers/Reader fic? It's only taken me what, like, four years to write!? If any of y'all have been with me since my blog or Wattpad in 2014, you KNOW how much I love Steeb when he's all (ง'̀-'́)ง in 1940s Brooklyn. Now he's all big I still love him, but nothing beats skinny!Steve.

In 1937, you met Steven Rogers. Just graduated high school, you were supposed to be waiting tables in a Brooklyn bar, looking for a husband. But what your father and step-momma didn’t know, was those pennies weren’t being saved, and you weren’t going out with the gals to meet boys. You bought a sketch book and applied to Auburndale Art School. You were just nineteen years old with a head full of dreams, and so was Steve. You shared your sandwich with him once when he had nothing in his bag, and ever since, you were fast friends.

Today, you were perched on the windowsill, waiting for the professor to enter. It was better to sit away from the others, because Steve had a hard time hearing you with the noise of everyone else around. But, instead of chatting, you were sitting in silence, leaning against the window, against each other.

You glance to the clock above the chalkboard and check your wristwatch. You frown, and glance to Steve. “Professor McMullin is late,” you tell him.

Steve blinks. “He’s never late.” But as he says that, in comes Prof McMullin, arms full of rolled-up canvases and hair awry. He must have run from the train station, because his slacks are muddied, and cheeks are a shade of pink. “What do you think –,”

“My apologies, students,” Professor McMullin placed all the canvases upon his desk by the side, and from his shoulder bag, withdrew a newspaper. You glance to Steve, puzzled, but your teacher reads aloud, “There’s talk in the press of a war beginning in Europe,” he says, and stroking his face, adds, “These dark times descending…but now’s not the time to talk of that sort of thing. I’m sure you’re all itching to sketch still life, yes?”

The class follows the instructions of Professor McMullin, as do you and Steve. In the centre of the room is a bowl of fruit, but every time you try and correct the curve of the pear upon your page, you can’t help but think of the war. When you glance to Steve, you see he has the same sort of trouble, and instead of sketching the fruit, there’s a portrait of your profile under his pencil’s tip.

“You’ve got that look in your eye, Stevie,” you say, bending your head not to attract attention.

He doesn’t look at you when he replies, “What look?”

“The one that you have right now,” you whisper, ignoring the glares from other students. “Like you have when you’re about to do something stupid.” He’s silent, perhaps ignoring your words, and you add, quieter, “Whatever it is, count me in.”

* * *

Two years later, you’re still scraping pennies to pay for Auburndale, but it isn’t the same since Steve dropped out last month. There’s nobody to chat with, nobody to watch out for, nobody to sneakily patch up in your house after he’d been roughhoused by bullies. It’s hard. When your father catches wind that you’ve one more year away from being a commissionable artist, he isn’t mad, but impressed. He doesn’t get why you spend so much time around Steve, though.

Just like two years ago, though, Professor McMullin, albeit, with less hair upon his head, comes in with a newspaper, this time with a black and white photograph of a plane. The headline _War Comes to Europe_ is enough to explain his sombre mood. Except, this time, when you glance beside you, Steve isn’t there.

You catch up with him after class, when you’re waiting tables. He’s a hot-and-cold regular, sitting in the back of the bar, sipping water, and sketching in his nearly-full pad. You know he’s down on himself, because he doesn’t talk much. But you’re never one to let anyone suffer alone, and when your boss isn’t looking, you sneak over to his table, to sit.

“Liking your city juice?” you nod toward his glass.

Steve shrugs. “It is what it is.” He says simply, eyes downcast upon his latest drawing.

You glance over his shoulder, taking in the art. It’s good – if he wasn’t so down on luck and coin, he would be in Auburndale on his own merit. But it’s what he’s drawing that makes your shoulders sag, breath escape your lips. It’s his friend James.

“It’s good,” you tell him softly. “I miss talking with you in class, Stevie.”

“Thanks,” Steve hums, darkening the shade of James’ fancy hair. He pauses, and adds, “…I heard America’s going to war, ________. Bucky hasn’t stopped talking about it all day.”

You know what he’s playing at, and before you can help yourself, you say, “Oh Steve, if I know something about anything, I know what that means, coming from you.” You wince, knowing what he’ll say before he’s even opened his mouth.

“Every other man gets to go to war,” he retorts.

“________, it ain’t your break!” your boss shouts, snapping a towel behind the bar.

You flush and return to pick up empty crockery and serve false cheery smiles to patrons, all the while you’re thinking about what Steve Rogers will inevitably do. When you do get a moment to glance to your friend, he’s gone, leaving a Lincoln on the table and a water stain where he didn’t use a coaster.

“Oh, Stevie,” you whisper, wiping down the table. “Don’t do anything stupid…”

* * *

When the war is hot in the country, and half the men away, you’re shocked to hear that your father is not going. Well, he is going. You’re setting the table for dinner for your father, step-momma, and little brother when you overhear your parents in the other room. Your step-momma is in tears, and standing by the crack at the door, you watch as she breaks down crying into your father’s arms.

Her mother is dying.

You never met your mother – she had died the day after you were born, from an infection. When your father remarried, you were too young to know that your stepmother was anything more than the woman who carried you. Before she went back to live in China, Grandmother Yue had always wiped the tears from your face, brushed off the dirt from your knees, and urged you to go back to play outside. She was always telling stories and sneaking you little gifts of buttons and ticket stubs.

She couldn’t be dying. No, they were lying. Your parents had to be.

“No,” you cried, pushing into the room, face full of tears. “She can’t – no!”

Your step-momma gathered you in her arms, and together you wept. Your little brother was too young to understand and watched silently. Dinner was quiet, too. You knew what they had been talking about now, before you had burst in.

The family were moving to China.

The next morning when you to go to find Steve to tell him the news, at the door to his place you don’t find Steve. Instead, it’s his friend, James, wearing his army uniform. He says he’s going that afternoon, and that Steve’s just gone five minutes ago to buy bread and milk from the corner store.

“I’m leaving too,” you tell James, scuffing your shoes upon the doormat, “My family are moving to China.”

“Guess we’re all leaving the poor kid alone.” He says, his smile sad, “I’m sure if you stick around for a couple of minutes, Stevie’ll be back for you to say goodbye.”

But all the courage you mustered to come over leaves you then. You hadn’t thought of it as goodbye; more like, see you tomorrow, or later on, if tomorrow or later on when the war ended, or your grandmother was at peace. You shake your head, wish James Barnes the best, and leave.

Goodbye is so formal.

When you get back to your home, your father has put most of your things in boxes, some labelled for freight overseas, some for charity. Luckily your stationary is left out, and penning a letter you write,

_Dearest Stevie,_

_I am ever so sorry I couldn’t say this to your face. I’m not strong like that, don’t think I will ever be. I’m horrible at goodbyes. I couldn’t stand it when you left Auburndale, and now I can’t stand the thought of me leaving you. My grandmother who lives in China is dying; you might remember her, she made food that even your stomach ulcers could stand. My family is moving, and with the war, I can’t help but worry that I’ll lose you._

You felt a tear fall and watched as it splashed into the words etched in lead. You wish you were brave enough to write _so we’ll write every day, I promise. I love you, Steve, I always have._ But you don’t. Instead,

_When the war is over, I’ll come back to America. I promise. Maybe even then, I’ll be your best girl, if you’ll have me._

_Your ________._

* * *

You hate the city now. It’s too loud, and it never stops, even at night. You’d give anything to go back seventy years to the days of your childhood before everything was screwed up by the war, and the wolves who cashed in on it. But, there’s one reason you like it. It outweighs all the bad – the rude cab drivers, the perverts, the ignorant masses. He sleeps before you, laying inert on the bed.

He barely looks like Steve.

You remember Steve as a frail little thing, with flat feet, and whose fists were always raw from fighting for the honour of those who couldn’t. He made jokes and wheezed when they made him laugh too, and drew the most fantastic artworks you ever saw, and, since 1941, you’ve seen a bit. But, asleep on the bed, is Steve.

You don’t want to tell him about what happened to you.

Well, you’ll tell him the decent things. The fluff. About how when you arrived in China, your grandmother had passed away four days before the boat docked on Chinese soil. How your father got a job as an English teacher in a school, your brother growing up in the little town with no memory of Brooklyn.

You feel your heart-rate increase just thinking of the horrible things they did to you when you were just twenty-six. How you had been abducted one night as you returned from the markets and taken. You never saw your father, your stepmother again. You later learned they were HYDRA, but at that time, they were agents of Lucifer himself, poking and prodding at you with different sticks. Your birthmother had a gene in her, something she passed to you, and it was something which made you valuable. Wanted. They made you dust, and then built you from the ashes like a plaything.

You ran away, leaving their laboratory afire. After that day, you learned you could never die.

You look back to Steve. You had been a part of the team who had found him – you had never given up on the urban legend of the captain of America. It was all your findings, all the sleuth work over the last half-century which had allowed for S.H.I.E.L.D. to curate one of the most detailed profiles of Steve, and while their allegiance was to America, yours was to the friend you had never given up on.

His fingers move. Then, his eyelashes.

He sits up.

You smile. “Hi, Stevie.”

* * *

_In your dreams, you’re twenty again, and so is he, and he fits into your side when you lay in bed together. It was never like this, and it never would have been, but now it is, and in your dreams, it’s always set in your past. Your fingers are interlocked with his, and slowly, you count the breaths between the words you spew forth of all the things you wanted to say to him back then._

_He looks at you with those blue eyes, oh, those eyes haven’t changed in seventy or so years. No, they’re gorgeous, and they watch you with a hint of a smirk. Like always._

_“…I met a man who lived under water, and I climbed to the peak of Mount Everest –,” you say._

_“I don’t doubt you did,” Stevie interjects, his Brooklyn accent thick as anything. He shuffled closer to you, his head beside your head, his lips upon your lips. “You were always so determined.”_

_You smile, and the world smells of lemongrass and happiness._

But it isn’t real, and when your eyes open, you see him. He’s not skinny, he’s what Erskine created. Those arms like truck tyres, thighs like stuffed sausages. But his eyes, they’re still Steve. They’ll always be Steve.

“You woke yourself up laughing again,” Steve whispers, laying beside you under the sheets. The room is barely lit, the crack of dawn peeking rebelliously through the drawn curtains. “Good dream?”

You hum, taking his hand into yours, kissing his palm. “Always, darling.”

**Author's Note:**

> Buy me [ko-fi](https://www.ko-fi.com/M4M3P4NJ)?
> 
> If you have any requests, find me on Tumblr at @susiephalange, or [@phalangewrites](https://phalangewrites.tumblr.com/request_conditions) ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ✿


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